from the it's-that-simple dept

A few weeks back, I was a guest on the famed TWiT netcast, on a special episode mostly about net neutrality. You can see it at that link (I tried to embed, but it appears, unfortunately, that TWiT doesn't do HTTPS embeds -- something I hope the TWiT folks will fix in the near future).

However, this post has nothing to do with me being on the show, but rather something that was said by Sonic's CEO Dane Jasper concerning net neutrality and Title II: that Title II is only a "regulatory burden" if you're an ISP that's doing bad stuff to consumers. Much of the first hour was a discussion between Jasper and another small ISP owner, Brett Glass, who has been rather vehement in his dislike of net neutrality or Title II. Glass brought up a key talking point that big ISPs and other anti-Title II people have made repeatedly: that using Title II would be a huge regulatory burden, "burying ISPs in red tape" (as Glass noted). Yet Jasper explained how that's just not true, and, in fact, he's not at all worried about the "regulatory burden" because as long as he's not doing anything to muck up your connection, there's basically no additional regulatory issue (this is from about 27 minutes into the show):

Dane: I think that the more substantial risk is to the Internet and web properties, particularly new innovative web properties. If there isn't some regulation around what carriers who dominate the marketplace can do to that traffic. So that I see, the threat to the Internet is the top priority, and Brett talks about an insurmountable amount of red tape. Today, Internet service providers are required to publish for the FCC a disclosure of traffic management practices. So we publish a disclosure. I think it says we don't touch your bits. We don't modify, we don't filter, we don't engage in deep pack inspection. So, I think from a compliance perspective, if the assumption is that Title II will be by and large gutted, or rather they engage in forbearance of all provisions and begin to re-enable provisions that allow them to assure the traffic is treated equally, my expectation is those of use that treat traffic equally will have a pretty light regulatory burden.

This line has stuck with me, because the argument that Title II is burying service providers in regulation just keeps coming up. It was brought up recently by Mark Cuban in the comments to our post about Cuban's view of net neutrality. And yet, the key parts of Title II that are important for these net neutrality rules are really pretty limited. Sections 201 and 202 are the key ones, and do very little in terms of adding "red tape" to being an ISP. They just talk about not allowing the service provider to engage in unreasonable discrimination.

Yet, as Dane notes, so long as you stick to net neutrality, and you make it clear to the FCC (as is already required) that you don't muck with people's connections, the actual "regulatory burden" will be absolutely minimal. And that's from someone who will clearly have to deal with it. So, that should probably make you wonder: when ISPs argue that there will be a massive regulatory burden associated with Title II, just what sorts of games are they planning to play with your traffic to encounter such a regulatory burden?

from the your-promised-broadband-Utopia-never-arrived dept

While Title II is the best net neutrality option available in the face of a lumbering broadband duopoly, it still doesn't fix the fact that the vast majority of customers only have the choice of one or two broadband options. It's this lack of competition that not only results in net neutrality violations (as customers can't vote down stupid ISP behavior with their wallet), but the higher prices and abysmal customer service so many of us have come to know and love. Stripping away protectionist state laws can help a little, as can the slow rise of services like Google Fiber. But even these efforts can only go so far in blowing up a broadband duopoly, pampered through regulatory capture and built up over a generation of campaign contributions.

One solution is the return to the country's barely-tried implementation of unbundling and network open access, or requiring that the nation's subsidy-slathered monopolists open their networks to allow other competitors to come in and compete. There are many variations of this concept, and it's something Google Fiber promised in its markets before backing away from it (much like their vocal support of net neutrality). Obviously being forced to compete is an immensely unpopular concept for the nation's incumbent ISPs. Given that those companies dictate and often literally write the nation's telecom laws, these requirements were eliminated in a number of policies moves starting in 2001 and culminating in the FCC's Triennial Review Remand Order of 2004 (pdf).

This was amazingly presented at the time as a way to improve competition and spur investment, but primarily resulted in a bloodbath as dozens of consumer-friendly, smaller independent ISPs and CLECs were killed off, perpetuating and further cementing the noncompetitive duopoly we have today.

One of the few small ISPs to manage to run that gauntlet and survive it was California's Sonic.Net, which has since proceeded to not only build a sizable regional network of its own in California, but to manage to treat consumers well while doing it (Sonic has been praised by the EFF repeatedly for consumer-friendly data disclosure policies). In a blog post last week, Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper notes that neutrality issues are just a symptom of the lack of competition, and to fix these we're going to need to start thinking differently:

"Lets call it like it is: in most of America, we’ve got a broadband duopoly at best. And it’s simple economic theory and best-practice capitalism that in an unregulated near-monopoly, you will see manifestations of policies, practices and behaviors that are not always customer friendly. If we accept that high speed Internet access is essential for modern life, the fact that we need a set of controls that assure that an entrenched operator won’t use their captive audience in an unreasonable way shouldn’t come as a surprise.

While neutrality is the topic of the day, the real fix is to reinvigorate competitive Internet access in America. Competitive access in Europe supported by legislation similar to The 1996 Act has resulted in lower costs for consumers and far more choices in Europe. What Michael Powell decided to do hasn’t worked out as well for Americans. Today’s FCC should return to the roots of the Telecom Act, and reinforce the unbundling requirements, assuring that they are again technology neutral. This will create an investment ladder to facilities for competitive carriers, opening access to build out and serve areas that are beyond our reach today."

This isn't just a pipe dream. While we pretended to try open access as a concept, we never tried very hard. For the few years it was attempted, incumbent ISPs repeatedly made cooperation impossible for a smaller carriers, intentionally sabotaging installs, delaying support calls, and generally doing their very best to make sure that the concept didn't work. Carriers paid regulators to nap on these issues before then FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry) ultimately decided to kill the idea for good. This is, opponents of the idea will insist, somehow proof positive that the concept of open access doesn't work.

Except real-world data has repeatedly shown the open access model results in more competition and lower prices. This Berkman Center study (pdf) commissioned by the FCC (which the agency promptly ignored) showed the positive benefits of an open access model in a significant number of countries, including France. The result? French consumers, awash in competition, pay among the lowest prices anywhere for telecom services. This Venture Beat report from last week conveniently illustrates how an American that was paying Comcast and AT&T $230 every month had his mind blown by the experience of real competition:

"Now we live in the city center of Toulouse, France, in an apartment where I’m a broadband customer of a company called Numericable. Here’s what I get for $63 per month: 100 Mbps download speed, 250 cable channels, a home telephone with unlimited international calling, and a mobile phone that includes unlimited minutes and 3GB of data usage each month. (The only tradeoff was losing my unlimited AT&T data plan; but I also never come close to using 3GB.)...Separately, I’m getting ready to sign my wife up for a $20-per month mobile plan with mobile provider Free that comes with unlimited calling and 3GB of data."

Despite the fact this model clearly works, it's never considered in policy discussions as a serious possibility. Why? Quite simply because the incumbent providers don't want it. Through the use of their various PR folk, astroturfers, think tankers, fauxcademics and assorted hired mouthpieces, they've successfully managed to utterly vilify the concept, painting it as the very worst sort of government meddling in (not actually) free markets. Instead, we've chosen to head down the path of letting the nation's duopolists dictate telecom policy, and the end result should at this point be painfully obvious to everyone. Well, except the industry lobbyists who still somehow insist we're all living in a competitive broadband Utopia.

from the good-for-them dept

With so much recent concern about how the NSA and GCHQ (and, likely, others) basically look at unencrypted traffic as an easy way to hack into your data, it's becoming increasingly important for the big companies which manage tremendous amounts of the public's personal data to encrypt as much as possible. The folks over at the EFF have now put together a sort of crypto report card on which major companies are actually encrypting everything they can.

The results are a little disappointing. Only four companies -- Dropbox, Google, SpiderOak and Sonic.net -- got a perfect score on the five categories measured. Twitter is pretty close (and the only thing it's missing, STARTTLS, really would only matter if it were offering email, which it doesn't, other than to employees) while the rest still have a fair bit of work to do. The incumbent access providers -- AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- don't appear to care nearly enough about security at all. That's why it's little surprise that the NSA's deals with at least AT&T and Verizon are a major source of information. Once again, I'm rather happy I'm a Sonic.net customer for my internet access these days.

Hopefully this effort (and the ongoing concerns about the NSA, as well as outside hacking) lead more companies to upping their encryption game.

from the of-course dept

At the beginning of this year, we gave Twitter kudos for not rolling over when the government came calling with a so-called 2703(d) order (like a search warrant, but with much fewer protections for privacy) related to information concerning people associated with Wikileaks. We also wondered who else had received such an order and had not stood up to it. Some of the info is starting to come out, and it appears that both Google and ISP Sonic.net received such requests, at least concerning Jacob Appelbaum. Sonic.net notes that it, too, fought the request, but lost. It then fought to have the request made public, which finally happened, though some details are still under seal:

Sonic said it fought the government's order and lost, and was forced to turn over information. Challenging the order was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do," said Sonic's chief executive, Dane Jasper. The government's request included the e-mail addresses of people Mr. Appelbaum corresponded with the past two years, but not the full e-mails...

It's unclear if Google similarly fought the order. The company says it won't comment on specific cases. It's nice to see that Sonic was willing to fight for its users (which continues to cement the company's reputation as being one of the few user-first ISPs). It still remains likely that the government sent these orders to many others as well. In the case of Twitter there were multiple people being investigated, not just Appelbaum, though it's unlikely most of those others used Sonic.net. So chances are, other ISPs and other service providers received the orders, and whether or not they fought the government may never be known. In the meantime, the government continues its fishing expedition against Wikileaks, but apparently still hasn't found a smoking gun.